


Bedroom Hymns

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Assassins & Hitmen, Blood, Blow Jobs, Death Threats, Established Relationship, Exhibitionism, Hand Jobs, Hotels, Love Confessions, M/M, Marriage Proposal, No Plot/Plotless, Power Dynamics, Scratching, Shower Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-04 10:03:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16344707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: "Illumi looks at the jars for a breath, feeling something tight around his chest ease, like restraints he hadn’t even known were there, and then there’s a call from around the corner, loud over the sound of running water: 'Is that housekeeping?' and Illumi’s attention gives the makeup up at once to swing around to the source of that speech instead." Illumi has an unexpected reaction and Hisoka adapts.





	Bedroom Hymns

The blood is heavy in Illumi’s hair.

He should have cleaned up. He knows that, distantly, with the lilting rhythm of rules repeated into mantras when he was a young enough child to hardly understand the words. _Leave no trace_ , the words tell him, _hide your work_ , _kill any witnesses_. But Illumi’s needles stay in his pocket instead of his skin, unmarked by the coating of crimson that has splattered his face and soaked into his hair and coated his hands as if he’s dipped them in paint, and when he walks through the lobby of the hotel it’s with no more precaution towards secrecy than the few number of people within.

There’s a young woman behind the reception desk who glances up as he comes in and then has the good sense to fall back as her eyes go wide and her throat works on something unvoiced; Illumi will have to pay to silence her, either in blood or coin, depending on whether he solves the problem himself or gets his brother to do so. But for now he ignores her, leaving her mouthing soundless shock at him as he paces through the lobby and to the elevators at the far end before stepping into the first pair of doors and pressing a button to carry him upwards over the intervening distance.

He has more important concerns than witnesses occupying his attention at the moment.

The hallway is long, curving in on itself to hide Illumi’s view of more than the first handful of doors down from the elevator, but the room he’s looking for is third in the line and he doesn’t bother investigating further. His feet cut a straight-line path for him to the door in question, his bloodstained hand lifts to knock sharply against the weight of the barrier; and then he waits, his shoulders heavy and his eyes gazing straight ahead, watching the smooth of the door without really seeing it as he counts the beating of his heart to tell the passage of seconds with something like reliability. His pulse is faster than usual, he thinks, and he lets the count go long to compensate, but even after he’s made it all the way to twenty there is no response at all from inside the room, no indication that the occupant has heard his rap or that there even is an occupant at all. Illumi blinks, once, taking a moment to compose his thoughts to logic in the strange, crystalline awareness that has gripped him, and then he reaches to lay hand to the doorknob, and wrenches at it with force enough to break the lock and grant him access.

There’s no trace of a struggle within. The room is clearly occupied, pristine white sheets rumpled over the bed and clothes scattered haphazardly across the foot and over the back of a chair; there’s a half-dozen jars of makeup on the desk, too, face paint and lipstick and eyeliner all carefully lined up in spite of the disorganization in the rest of the room. Illumi looks at the jars for a breath, feeling something tight around his chest ease, like restraints he hadn’t even known were there, and then there’s a call from around the corner, loud over the sound of running water: “Is that housekeeping?” and Illumi’s attention gives the makeup up at once to swing around to the source of that speech instead.

“My apologies,” the speaker goes on, in that familiar tone that always sounds like a song, like it’s tracking out the line of some melody hanging just out of audibility in the air. “I didn’t hang up the sign but I am very definitely in occupancy and very _un_ clothed.” That’s the lead-in to a laugh, trilling high over rich undertones far in the back of the speaker’s throat. “Not that I mind particularly, for myself.” There’s the sound of footsteps against tile as the other approaches the open doorway connecting the bathroom space to the bedroom. “You’re welcome to get an eyeful.” A hand braces at the edge of the doorframe, a bare shoulder comes into view with deliberate grace, and then Illumi is looking straight into Hisoka’s unpainted face as the other steps into view. He’s exactly as naked as he indicated -- absent of his usual makeup his face carries the same tan that lays itself over his shoulders and down the flex of muscle in his arms, and the thick of his cock against his thigh suggests the truth of his unselfconsciousness, even if he’s still relatively flaccid -- but Illumi only glances over the expanse of skin left bare in front of him before he draws back up to meet Hisoka’s gaze as the other’s eyes widen on that rarest expression on his face, that of true and unadulterated shock.

“Hisoka,” Illumi says, his voice as level as ever, untouched by the rhythm of his heart beating in his chest or the effort he has spent in making it here to set his focus on the other before him. “You’re alive.”

Hisoka’s eyebrows jump towards the wet of his hair. Illumi realizes distantly that the sound of running water hasn’t stopped since he came in the door; Hisoka must have been in the middle of a shower and not bothered to interrupt himself for what he assumed was an accidental intrusion. “I am,” he says. His hand at the edge of the doorframe flexes, his hip angles out to the side; it’s a suggestion and a warning at once, as the motion makes a distracting curve of his body and simultaneously hides his far hand behind the angle of his hip. “Is that an observation or a disappointment?”

“Neither,” Illumi says, and steps forward over the distance between himself in the middle of the hotel room and the edge of the bathroom tile. Hisoka steps back sharply, the action a clearer sign of alarm than any he would normally give, but Illumi doesn’t care; he’s just moving, stepping forward on legs that seem to have a mind of their own, until when they give out from under him to drop him to his knees at the edge of the bathroom he lands hand enough to knock the air from his lungs in a gust of startled force. His hair swings forward, scattering a spray of crimson to land in an arc against the white tile of the bathroom floor, but Illumi isn’t looking at the brilliance of the red against the white; he’s lifting his chin instead, turning his face up to see Hisoka standing over him with a look on his face like Illumi has never seen before.

“I’m glad,” Illumi says, shaping the words to care on his tongue. It’s strange to feel the shape of them on his lips, to hear them in the resonance of his own voice echoed off the walls; stranger still to feel the ache in his chest as an afterimage of sincerity, as if he can only recognize the truth of the statement as it takes form in his own throat. “I killed them all before I could ask if they had already found you.”

Hisoka’s still staring at Illumi. Illumi doesn’t understand the look on the other’s face; there’s a tension behind his eyes, an absence of his usual smirking amusement against his lips. Even his lack of clothing looks like less of a seduction than Hisoka’s jutting hip and flexing shoulders usually make of his own nakedness; it seems almost incidental, as if he’s borrowed the inattention that Illumi generally feels for such matters in place of the seething heat that usually purrs through all his veins.

“You killed them,” Hisoka repeats back. Even his voice is different: softer, almost uncertain, if Illumi could say that he knows what uncertainty even sounds like in Hisoka’s throat. When he blinks the motion is reflexive instead of deliberate. “Who did you kill?”

“A group of Hunter assassins,” Illumi answers. “Someone put a bounty on your head.”

Hisoka’s mouth twists in the closest thing to a smile he has offered since he saw Illumi. “Again?” he says. “You would think they would know better by now.” His gaze refocuses on Illumi once more. “And you thought I couldn’t take care of myself? I’d expect you to be the first one funding the expedition.”

Illumi shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Not that.” But he doesn’t know what else to say, doesn’t know how to put words to the pressure in his chest and the knot in his throat; his training doesn’t extend to this, his experience is insufficient to encompass the pain in him, that tension that still seems to be growing even as he knows beyond any doubt that Hisoka is safe, is alive, is unharmed. It makes no sense, not when his mission is fulfilled, when his task in complete; for a moment all he can do is stare up at Hisoka’s face while his thoughts spin themselves to vertigo in his head. It wasn’t irritation that gripped him, not the jealous rage that Illumi has felt before when others spoke of killing Hisoka, as if Illumi hadn’t long since claimed that target for his own personal pursuit; it wasn’t even a calculated decision to indebt Hisoka to him, not when Illumi knows well how trivial such an attack would be to the other’s skill. It had been something different, something all-encompassing, possessive and desperate and raw with heat enough to burn through all the ice Illumi has formed around himself; and it’s then that Illumi’s mind finds the word, and his lips blurt the shape of it before he’s had a chance to brace himself.

“I was afraid.” The words fall with relief, with the clarity of epiphany more than the tension that Illumi has heard when other people offer them, or on those vanishingly rare moments he has won such from Hisoka himself, as if urging the other to play a role he’s less than precisely familiar with. But it’s not Hisoka who’s afraid, not even one of the enemies whose terror Illumi can feel wash over him to leave him untouched by any but the spill of blood hot with fright, and no sooner has Illumi spoken than the knot in his chest drags tight, pulling itself back into place as if it never left, as if his words were enough to summon it into full existence again. Illumi takes a breath that rasps in his throat, straining around that strange, foreign presence, and he goes on listening to himself speak, hearing the words fall like rain from his lips while he parses the storm from their shape. “They talked about killing you, of taking you while you slept and leaving you there to be forgotten until someone found you, and I thought about hearing the news months from now when you were already gone and--” Illumi’s throat constricts, his breath chokes him. “--and I couldn’t--”

Liquid slides across Illumi’s face, clinging heat burning over his cheek. He blinks, wondering if he took unnoticed harm from one of his victims, if there’s some injury in the wet dark of his hair that’s spilling open to trickle over his face. He lifts his hand to touch to his cheek and draws his bloodstained fingers back, but there’s no fresh red over the dried-dark stain on his skin; rather the tips of his fingers are smeared to pink as the layer of blood coating them is diluted down by the effect of clear salt trickling over his skin. Illumi stares for a moment, his breathing hiccuping in his throat; and then he realizes what he’s seeing, and shudders an exhale of understanding.

“I’m crying,” he observes. When he blinks his lashes overflow with another path of wet, the lines of tears coursing new tracks down his face. Illumi lets his hand fall to his side, feeling as absent from himself as if his consciousness has been forced up to a cage in the back of his head, held hostage by the reflex of his body around him, until it takes conscious effort to lift his gaze and return his focus to Hisoka’s face before him. “Hisoka?”

Hisoka is staring at Illumi. Illumi’s seen Hisoka a dozen ways: irritable, amused, seductive and spent, murderous and jealous and desperate and delighted. He’s seen every variety of Hisoka’s makeup laid to careful detail over the arches of the other’s cheekbones and painted into his lashes and along his mouth, has seen the effect of blood and rain and sweat smudge those same careful lines into no more than vague smears of color. Illumi has never seen Hisoka look like this: no makeup, no disguise, nothing to hide the wide-open attention of his eyes and the slack part of his mouth. He looks a little bit pleased, Illumi thinks, or maybe there’s some shading of what Illumi thinks of as pleasure in the unthinking give of the other’s face, but what Illumi has only ever glimpsed in the tangle of bedsheets is bare, now, stripped of even the nearly ever-present arousal the other usually musters to leave just him, just Hisoka standing barefoot on bloodspattered tile in front of Illumi on aching knees, and Illumi can feel the force of that like a blow against the hollow bell of his existence.

“Illumi,” Hisoka says, and that’s new too, that soft uncertainty in that voice, that tentative shaping of the outline of Illumi’s name on Hisoka’s lips. Illumi can feel the heat of it against him, sunlight against frozen ice, and it takes all the interest of Hisoka’s expression to keep him from shutting his eyes in surrender. Hisoka’s forehead creases, his lips press together. Illumi watches his throat work over something too hard for even Hisoka to give voice to lightly. “Do you _love_ me?”

Illumi blinks. The word feels strange in his ears, a fist pounding for entry on some door long-since bolted shut against all comers; but the motion of his lashes sets free another wash of tears over his cheeks, and he’s rasping for air, now, breathing harder for the fact of kneeling before Hisoka than he did for all the lives he ended before making his way here to the hotel. Illumi knows what love is: a weakness, a danger, a tool to be manipulated to whatever ends someone else might determine. It’s not something he has ever felt the lack of, not something he has ever wished for; and yet he’s on Hisoka’s bathroom floor with blood dripping from his hair and tears dripping from his face, having just taken nearly a dozen lives with no more promised payment than the continuation of a single existence of some slight value to his own. He’s thrown over all his safety precautions, has disregarded everything that was drilled into his willing mind and body through all the long years of his childhood, and still when he thinks of it Illumi can feel no kind of regret for his actions, can feel nothing at all but a dark, savage pleasure at having done what he did.

“Oh,” Illumi says. “Yes.”

Hisoka’s whole weight rocks back. For a moment Illumi thinks he’s going to stumble away, going to retreat to the far side of the bathroom to interpose as much distance between them as he can, as if Illumi is one of those assassins he killed, as if Hisoka really is as helpless in his bare skin as someone else might be. But his weight shifts, his shoulders arcing forward to catch his balance with as much supernatural grace as a cat twisting in midair, and when his feet move it’s to bring him closer instead, when his hands lift it’s to reach out. Hisoka’s fingers grab at Illumi’s hair, his hold seizing against the bloodstained weight of the locks, and Illumi’s head tips back resistanceless to the force of that hold as Hisoka comes in close enough to brace his foot between Illumi’s knees, to catch the wet of Illumi’s tears against the flex of muscle in his thigh.

“God,” Hisoka says, his voice ringing over the top of Illumi’s head like the decree of some god. He’s interposed himself between Illumi’s gaze and the bathroom light; with the bright behind him Illumi’s eyes are dazzled out of seeing until all he can parse is Hisoka’s silhouette, even the halo behind him too much to gaze on in comfort. One of the fists in Illumi’s hair eases and lifts, fingers drawing back to push the locks back from the other’s face with careful focus; Illumi’s head turns along with the touch, his neck twisting to angle back as Hisoka’s hand spills his hair back over his shoulder again. “You’re insane.”

Illumi tips his head into the closest thing he can find to a nod with Hisoka’s grip bracing his head into such a steep angle. “I might be.”

“You’re in love with me.” Hisoka’s hands twist into Illumi’s hair, his fingers knotting to tension against the locks to give over care for strain; Illumi notes the force of it, calculates the angle Hisoka would need to wrench to snap Illumi’s neck, notices his own lack of concern on the subject. He wonders if it’s trust, or lack of self-preservation, or something bigger than either, more terrifying than both, fisting itself around his heart and bleeding from his eyes with every breath he takes. “You killed to _protect_ me.”

“I didn’t want them to touch you,” Illumi says. He could reach up to brace at Hisoka’s wrist and stall out the possibility of motion before it happens; he could reach into his pocket and free a blade to slice through the artery at the inside of Hisoka’s thigh before the other can think. He does nothing at all, just stares up at the blinding light around Hisoka’s head and feels the grip at his hair, the fingers scratching hard over his scalp. “I don’t want anyone to touch you but me.”

Hisoka’s hands tighten, his grip pulling rough against the weight of Illumi’s hair for a moment before going slack at once, dropping from pain into soothing weight as the shadows of the other’s features give way to the bright spill of a laugh. “Ahh,” he sighs, and urges his hand back to stroke through the burden of the blood-wet locks. “That’s the Illumi I know.” His other hand lifts to follow the first, his fingers digging furrows in Illumi’s hair as the motion drips red to speckle the white underfoot, and Illumi’s head angles back in answer, the tip of it guided by Hisoka’s touch now that the other’s unflinching hold on his skull has eased. The friction of Hisoka’s fingers purrs down the whole of Illumi’s spine, aching against the back of his head and clenching against the emotion-ragged rhythm of his breathing, and Illumi stays right where he is, his shoulders slack and hands relaxed into overt surrender to the push of Hisoka’s hands at him.

“No one touching me but you, hm?” Hisoka’s voice has returned to the resonance that is so familiar to Illumi, that sounds so much like the purr of an enormous cat made liquid with heat in his throat. Illumi’s fingers shift, his hands tremoring as if they’ve been urged to action by Hisoka’s words, but he doesn’t move to lift them, doesn’t so much as blink where he’s gazing up at Hisoka over him. “How very possessive of you.” One hand comes around to the back of Illumi’s head, collecting the full weight of his hair before knotting to a fist; Illumi doesn’t flinch at the pull of it. “And what if I _want_ to be touched?”

“I’ll do it,” Illumi says without looking away from Hisoka, even as the shape of the other’s cock against his thigh colors and swells with the first flush of heat. “Anything you want. I’ll take care of it.”

“I bet you will,” Hisoka purrs. His hand stays in Illumi’s hair, still bracing against the back of the other’s head, but when he lifts his other it’s to slide against Illumi’s cheek, his touch sticking to the other’s skin with the weight of blood dried tacky between them. His thumb catches at the shape of Illumi’s bottom lip, pushing in and pulling down at once, and Illumi opens his mouth to let Hisoka’s thumb slide into the angle at the corner of his lips and brace between the friction of his teeth. Hisoka tastes like blood on Illumi’s tongue, when he breathes in he can taste iron and copper from the damp Hisoka’s hold has lifted from his hair, but Illumi doesn’t close his mouth and Hisoka doesn’t pull away.

“Wider,” he says instead, and angles his thumb to force Illumi’s jaw open. Illumi doesn’t resist any more than he helps; he just lets Hisoka urge him, moving him as easily as if he’s a doll, as if he’s a puppet run through with whatever threads Hisoka has been laying in him all these years, those same wires that jerked and pulled him into bloodsoaked action earlier this night. The thought does something down Illumi’s spine, quivering as if his body is reshaping itself to the urging of a needle, as if he’s becoming something different and new and unique under Hisoka’s touch, and Illumi submits to it, letting himself go amorphous in answer to the demand Hisoka makes of hands and fingers and body.

Hisoka doesn’t wait for Illumi to act, once he has the other’s mouth pushed open under his thumb. He still has that fist of the full weight of Illumi’s hair, and his cock has swollen to full strength without any urging at all beyond what he makes of anticipation and the sight of Illumi kneeling at the floor before him. The hand at Illumi’s hair pulls, dragging to force his head with his mouth still open into a clear suggestion, and when Hisoka’s hips buck it’s to slide his cock in against Illumi’s slack tongue, to seek out the pleasure of heated friction for himself from the other’s mouth. He comes forward first, still bracing Illumi’s jaw as his hips rock, as his gaze tracks the motion of his cock urging into the shadows of Illumi’s mouth and far against the back of his tongue; it’s only when he draws himself back that he lets his hold go, and then only to replace it with a palm urging close at the underside of Illumi’s jaw to hold him to the right angle. Illumi closes his lips, pressing his mouth flush around the slide of heat over his tongue and into his mouth, and over him Hisoka sighs an exhale, and tightens his fist in Illumi’s hair, and begins to work the other’s head into movement.

There’s not a rhythm to it. A pattern Illumi could lay claim to, could settle in against the steady beat of his heart and take over for his own use. But Hisoka moves jerkily, off-beat and syncopated to his own motion, until Illumi can no more anticipate the other’s action than he can balance himself. Sometimes Hisoka pulls Illumi in almost to the base of his cock, urging until Illumi can feel pressure at the back of his throat, can feel reflex urging his lungs to tighten on a cough and his throat to work to fight back the danger of intrusion; then the other forces Illumi back over his knees, bracing him to statue-stillness while Hisoka bucks his hips into tiny rhythmic motions as if to fuck the very head of his cock in over the give of Illumi’s lips. Illumi can taste the salt of precome against his tongue, can feel the slick pull of it clinging wet to the part of his lips, and then Hisoka draws him in again, sinking the whole of his length into Illumi’s mouth in one stroke that leaves Illumi’s breath hissing through his nose as he struggles to balance himself in the forward angle to which Hisoka has urged him.

Neither of them speak. The only sound in the bathroom is the splash of the shower still running to fill the space with steam and the panting inhales Hisoka is taking, loud and wanting enough that Illumi can hear them clearly over the patter of water on tile. The air is thick with humidity, near-liquid with every breath Illumi draws through his nose, but he doesn’t pull away, and Hisoka’s shoulders are curving in over him with every forward thrust, the hand in his hair pulling as if to brace the other’s balance as he rocks farther and farther forward, as his body arches with a gymnast’s strength to pull back before thrusting back into Illumi’s mouth. Hisoka’s cock slides in, parting Illumi’s lips around its shaft and urging deep over the give of his tongue; and then Hisoka’s hand drags at Illumi’s hair to force him back, and Hisoka’s body curves in to cast Illumi into his shadow, and his cock slides over the last inch of distance to penetrate the top span past Illumi’s tongue.

Illumi’s throat works in spite of himself, straining over the vestige of a reflex not yet stripped free from him, but when he lifts a hand at last it’s to clutch at Hisoka’s hip just before his face, to tighten his grip and maintain his balance while Hisoka lingers in the panting tension of his taking. Illumi’s mind is spinning, his hands are trembling with unfamiliar want and uncontrolled heat, as violent as the stir of bloodlust but directed elsewhere, into the pressure against his breath and an ache down in his belly, but when he tightens his hold on Hisoka’s hip the trembling stops, and when he swallows convulsively he can feel desperate reflex ease its grip in surrender to Hisoka. Hisoka is holding Illumi’s hair, bracing Illumi’s whole head close against him while he seeks out his pleasure against the span of the other’s lips and the drag of his tongue, and Illumi shuts his eyes and lets himself relax into the demand.

They stay there for a long moment, Illumi tasting salt in the back of his throat and feeling the burn of denied air ache at his chest. It’s less painful than the fear that was there, the unfamiliar terror of loss so debilitating he wants to never feel it again. Better to be with Hisoka here, better to have the strain of his body under Illumi’s hold and the taste of his cock all against Illumi’s tongue than to fear never having it again, than to feel the absence that would result from the other’s loss. It’s strange to recognize the attachment for what it is, to realize that Hisoka is a necessity more to be missed than Illumi would miss the loss of a limb from his own body, until Illumi wants nothing so much as this proof, as this connection linking them together, binding them until he can track Hisoka’s reactions more clearly than his own, until the heartbeat of heat against the press of his lips seems as much a reflection of his own arousal as something belonging to another. Hisoka is Illumi’s, as Illumi is Hisoka’s, to have and kill and hold and be as much as they belong to themselves, until Hisoka hissing a breath and pulling back to free Illumi’s lungs for air feels as much a loss as a relief.

“Not like this,” Hisoka says, with enough shadows on his voice to make the words a growl verging on anger even as Illumi’s lips burn with the heat of the other’s arousal. “Get up.” Hisoka pulls against Illumi’s hair with force enough to lift the other off his knees outright, if he had hesitated at all, but Illumi is already getting a foot under him and the hold he has at Hisoka’s hip gives him the means to rise with something like grace. His legs are shaky, he finds when he’s standing on them, and his cock is half-hard against the front of his pants, but his attention is still on Hisoka’s face as the illumination behind him shifts angle to cast light onto his features once again. His eyes catch the bright as his head lifts to track Illumi’s motion, shadows melting away to the gold of his gaze made molten by the heat of his arousal. There’s a burn there, something dark and animal-wanting, as much the threat of violence as the promise of pleasure, and Illumi gazes at Hisoka without blinking, drinking in the whole of the other’s attention as if he’s one of Illumi’s targets, as if Illumi might be one of his.

Hisoka’s forehead creases, his mouth tenses, and then he pulls at Illumi’s hair, rough in the impulse to drag the other towards him. Illumi isn’t expecting the action any more than he’s braced against it; he gives way without resistance, letting Hisoka’s pull force him in hard enough that his mouth and Hisoka’s collide with bruising force. Illumi’s lip catches between him and Hisoka; Hisoka’s mouth tears at Illumi’s teeth to spill the taste of blood between them, but neither of them pull away. Hisoka just opens his mouth, urging his tongue in past Illumi’s lips as if he means to lick the taste of his cock off the other’s tongue, and Illumi parts his lips to let him try, still with his hand lingering at Hisoka’s hip. Hisoka seeks out the whole of Illumi’s mouth, claiming every corner and licking in deep, until finally he draws back, breathing as hard as he did from Illumi’s mouth on his cock and with his lashes heavy and soft over his eyes. Illumi blinks, once, to bring himself back to the present, and then he meets Hisoka’s stare as levelly as he did before.

Hisoka snorts in the back of his throat. “Love,” he says, making the word a mockery on his tongue as he draws his hand up to smudge his thumb hard under Illumi’s eye. “ _Tears_.” His thumb slides up to the soft skin under the other’s eyelid; when it flexes Illumi can feel the pressure shiver danger down his spine. “And now you’re as calm as always. How are you so sure of your feelings when you’ve barely felt anything before? You’re an assassin, killing means nothing to you. You’d as soon do it for money as for me.”

“Yes,” Illumi says, without lifting his hand to push Hisoka’s touch away from his face, without trying to pull free of Hisoka’s fist in his hair. “But I haven’t killed you.”

Hisoka barks a sharp, startled laugh. “I’d like to see you try.” He sounds sincere more than joking, his voice bright with the excitement he always musters for this subject.

“So would I,” Illumi says. “Someday I will.” He lifts his slack hand from his side, slowly, so Hisoka has time to see him reaching out to touch the other’s wet hair with crimson fingers. The color smears between them, dragging over Illumi’s hand as it vanishes into the shading of Hisoka’s hair. “I hope you win.”

Hisoka’s smile flickers, fading from his lips as the haze of heat lifts from his gaze to leave him staring wide-eyed at Illumi again, again as distracted as if he’s never seen him before. Illumi curls Hisoka’s hair around his fingers, feeling the slow-drying curl of the lock before he drops his hand back to his side. He lets his other hand go too, both coming down on their own weight to hang next to him, and he looks at Hisoka, waiting for whatever the other wants from him. Hisoka goes on staring, his hands still pressing to Illumi’s face and buried in his hair; and then he drops them, both at once falling to his sides immediately, and he takes a step back to open a gap between their bodies.

“Take your clothes off,” he says, short and certain. Illumi moves at once to lift his hands to the hem of his shirt so he can pull it up and off his body; Hisoka watches for a moment, his gaze tracking the moment of the fabric sliding free of Illumi’s hair before he turns aside to the bathroom counter. Illumi can hear him clattering through whatever is set out against the surface, knocking over bars of soap and scattered jewelry, but he doesn’t watch the motion. He’s peeling his clothes off his body, stripping shirt and pants and shoes from himself with focused efficiency as his hair falls to curtain his vision to dark. He’s occupied in his own efforts, stripping himself to skin with speed only just this side of calm instead of haste, so he doesn’t hear Hisoka approaching, doesn’t know the other is behind him until Illumi’s pushing against the waistband of his last piece of clothing and feels the heat of a touch ghost at his hip.

“What’s this?” Hisoka murmurs, his voice sounding the darker for the muffling weight of Illumi’s hair around his head; or maybe it’s just the heat on his voice, the pleasure rising as his fingertips follow down the crease of Illumi’s hip to the close-curled dark at the base of the other’s shaft, where Illumi’s cock is heavy with heat enough to draw it out half-hard from its usual slack weight at his thigh. It’s a strange feeling, to have such warmth in him without any direct urging to it; stranger still as Hisoka’s fingers urge in beneath the weight to lift and urge it towards greater resistance. “Has the springtime of love finally come to my ice prince?” His grip curls into a deliberate hold, his fingers tightening against Illumi’s shaft; Illumi can feel himself swelling hotter just for Hisoka’s touch, even without the half-formed stroke the other takes up as if testing the shape of Illumi’s cock in his hold.

Illumi lets his hands fall from the weight of his underwear; it’s halfway down his thighs already, and heavy enough that it slides to tangle at his ankles without any further urging. Of more interest is the color rising to his cock under Hisoka’s fingers, the shift of the other’s wrist as he stroke steadily up over Illumi’s length in his palm; it’s as if Illumi is watching someone else’s arousal, as if it’s a stranger’s or maybe Hisoka’s desire he’s seeing blossom to such evident heat under Hisoka’s practiced grip. But he can feel the ache of it down in his own belly, the knot of pressure forming itself in the weight of his balls as if it’s anticipating the coaxing friction that Illumi usually needs to draw the pleasure of orgasm free from him, and when Hisoka’s thumb pushes up over the slit at the head Illumi grabs for the other’s forearm without thinking, his fingernails catching to dig in against Hisoka’s skin with sudden, vicious force.

“Ah,” Hisoka purrs. He’s leaned in; the sound of his voice comes almost at Illumi’s ear, as if pouring itself to heat against the other’s spine. “It seems it has.” A hand settles at the top of Illumi’s hips, a palm fitting to the dip of his back just over the curve of his ass; Hisoka’s fingers slide to drag over Illumi’s skin before questing a slick path down to the tension at his entrance.

“Are you as willing to receive as to give?” Hisoka asks, but his fingers are asking the same with even more persuasion than his voice gives the words. His touch urges up, a fingertip pressing slick to Illumi’s entrance, and when his finger curls it’s to slide up into the other, to urge pressure into the give of Illumi’s body as the hand around his cock strokes steady friction over him. Illumi knows this, knows the rhythm of this, the release of tension and the easing to Hisoka’s force as he unfolds his body for the other’s use, as he leaves himself open for Hisoka to take in exchange for Hisoka urging him up and into pleasure of his own; but it’s different, like this, with Illumi hard as soon as Hisoka touches him, with his cock straining at his hips before Hisoka’s fingers are in him. The pressure is different, now, a friction to urge against an ache Illumi can feel in the lowest point of his belly, a counterpoint to the heat working against his length clasped close in Hisoka’s palm. Illumi feels his breathing coming faster, feels his thighs tensing and easing with reflexive pressure as if he’s taken Hisoka’s heat into himself, as if the taste of salt on his tongue has borrowed some of the other’s ever-ready arousal for Illumi’s own veins, until when Hisoka pushes another finger into him Illumi’s throat strains on his exhale, unravelling his voice into a moan that startles him as much with the echo of it off the walls as the toe-curling friction that works into him.

Hisoka coughs a startled sound, an approximation of a laugh too close to a groan to be clear, and his hips buck forward to pin his cock against Illumi’s hip. “I’ve never seen you like this,” he says against Illumi’s ear, his lips so near they press Illumi’s bloodstained hair close between them. “So responsive. So _ready_.” His hips buck forward to punctuate; Illumi’s legs jerk to rock up into Hisoka’s hand and the other pushes farther into him in answer to pin Illumi in place between his fingers and his grip at once. “I could finish you like this, right here over the floor.”

Illumi doesn’t answer. Illumi isn’t sure he can answer, not when his vision is blurring out of more focus than he can blame on the steam filling the room and turning the light around them ethereal and diffuse. Even when his fingers flex at Hisoka’s arm he doesn’t know what he’s straining for any more than he could put a name to the force that compelled him forward to tear apart the would-be assassins who wished to claim Hisoka’s life for their own. The pressure in him is too keen for clarity, too much to be contained, until all Illumi has left is to gasp for lungfuls of sticky-hot air and let the friction of Hisoka’s presence surge through him with all the force of divinity containing itself in a mortal shell. Hisoka’s fingers work, Illumi’s back arches, and then Hisoka groans a breath and lets his hold on Illumi’s cock go, dropping his grip to the other’s hip instead to brace him against shaking legs as he slides slick fingers back out of Illumi’s body.

“I’m not going to though,” he says, and reaches to catch his bare foot at the edge of Illumi’s underwear still puddled around his feet. Illumi steps free without being told, leaning heavily on the support of Hisoka’s arm but moving all the same, and Hisoka comes around him as quickly as Illumi’s feet touch the bloodstained tile, moving around Illumi with the boneless grace of a dancer as he slides his arm free of Illumi’s hold and catches the other’s wrists in his grip instead. He’s grinning, Illumi sees, the flash of his teeth bright enough to be seen even to Illumi’s hazy vision, and when he pulls the force urges Illumi in towards that same smile even before Hisoka puts words to his desire. “Come with me, love.”

Hisoka backs them up over the bathroom floor, moving with comfort enough to speak eloquently to his familiarity; he doesn’t turn to look as he approaches the open side of the glass wall that serves as a barrier for the spray of the shower that has been left to run since before Illumi arrived. The water hits Hisoka’s shoulders first, splashing down his back and spraying up into his hair, but he just keeps backing up into it, still smiling as his hair dampens to dark and moisture catches dewdrops at his lashes. Illumi follows, urged forward by Hisoka’s hold on his wrists into the spray of the shower as well, until the heat is soaking into the weight of his hair down his back, saturating the damp and sending a spill of pink-tinted water down Illumi’s thighs and over the still-stiff arch of his cock.

“Mmm,” Hisoka purrs, so deep down in his chest Illumi thinks he can see the vibration under the span of the other’s ribs, as if the sound is thrumming to visibility under the play of muscle that layers Hisoka’s chest and over his arms. “That’s what I want to see.” He steps in closer, his hold pushing Illumi back into a diagonal, and Illumi retreats, backing up until his shoulders hit the cool of the steam-fogged glass behind him. Illumi doesn’t say anything, and Hisoka doesn’t wait for the possibility of it; he just urges closer, bracing a foot between Illumi’s before giving up the other’s wrist to reach down and lift hard against the angle of Illumi’s knee. Illumi’s weight is pressed back against the glass behind him, his hair catching between the cool and his skin, and he hardly has time to reach and grab at the support of Hisoka’s shoulder before Hisoka is dropping his other wrist to lift Illumi off his feet outright so he can spread the other’s thighs apart under the urging of his hands. Illumi tips back, caught by the glass at his back as much as by his hold on Hisoka before him, and Hisoka pants a breath and bares his teeth into a smile made raw on want.

“You’ll kill anyone who touches me,” he says. His arms are tense with the effort of holding Illumi up; Hisoka is stronger than Illumi thinks anyone knows, but Illumi bears the weight of more muscle than his frame would suggest, and the strain is clear in Hisoka’s body. Still, his voice is calm, as easy as if they’re lying in bed, as if the air around them isn’t waterlogged with steam, as if they haven’t both been fully hard for long minutes without satisfaction. “Fine.” He pushes Illumi’s legs wider, back until the other’s knees are nearly touching the glass behind him; Illumi feels the tension at his legs, the pull of flexibility in the big muscles of his thighs, but he doesn’t flinch and doesn’t fight the push as Hisoka urges him back and open against the wall of the shower.

Hisoka takes a step forward, bracing both feet in the splash of red-stained water trickling down Illumi’s hair and along his back to splatter at the shower floor. “The same for you,” he says, his eyes locked on Illumi’s, his smile fixed sharp as a blade at Illumi’s throat. “If anyone thinks of taking you on, I get first claim.”

Illumi doesn’t blink away from Hisoka’s gaze. “Yes.”

“No one touches me but you.” Hisoka’s hips rock forward, the head of his cock nudging pressure against Illumi’s entrance like a promise, like a suggestion. “No one touches you but me.”

Illumi flexes his fingers, lets his nails drag the heat of blood to the surface of Hisoka’s steam-flushed skin. “Yes.”

Hisoka’s grin pulls brighter. “Done,” he says, and his legs flex to rock his hips forward, to drive his cock up and into the shape of Illumi’s body before him. Illumi’s hands flex, his nails piercing points of what must be pain against the back of Hisoka’s neck and into the span of his shoulder, but when Hisoka groans the sound is raw heat, without any caveat of pain or discomfort as he couples their bodies together. He moves hard, with force enough to overcome any resistance Illumi’s reflex might offer, but Illumi has regained some measure of control over his instinct, now, and as Hisoka thrusts Illumi opens for him, giving way so Hisoka’s cock sinks hilt-deep into him with the first flex of his thighs. Hisoka’s breath rasps in his throat, skidding high as if dragged there by the grip of Illumi’s body around him; when his shoulders flex his hands pin bruises under the inside of Illumi’s knees where he’s shoving the other back against the glass.

“You love me,” Hisoka says, the words unravelling into a moan as quickly as he gives them, and his hips draw back to snap forward and sink himself within Illumi as if he can’t help himself, as if the sound of his voice alone is enough to tighten the fist of arousal within him. Illumi’s breath gives way in his lungs in a silent gust of air, his thighs flex as if in resistance to Hisoka’s hold, but Hisoka doesn’t lift his gaze from where he’s fixed it at Illumi’s shoulders to pant his speech to the spill of water trickling over the other’s collarbone. When he moves again it’s arrhythmic, desperate, the motion of a man overtaken by his own lust and mad with the need for satisfaction. “Tell me, Illumi.”

Illumi digs his nails in deeper to Hisoka’s shoulder, as much to feel the shudder across Hisoka’s body against his as for the spill of blood that follows to trickle crimson down the flex of the other’s back. “I love you, Hisoka.” The words are flat on his tongue, stripped down to no more than sound, but Hisoka’s lashes flutter as if with a blow, as if in the throes of orgasm, and when he moans the sound is loud enough to echo off the walls of the bathroom around them.

“ _Yes_ ,” he says, and slides one of his hands in under Illumi’s knee to brace the other’s weight in the angle of his elbow and free his hand to clutch at Illumi’s shoulder instead. “Tell me you want me.”

“I want you,” Illumi says, and inside him Hisoka’s cock strokes deep, the swollen heat of it penetrating into the shadows of his body to spark a shudder of electricity enough to tremble through the whole of Illumi’s spine and out into the grip of his fingers.

“How?” Hisoka demands. “Do you want to fuck me?” He slides back slow, this time, dragging over the motion like he’s savouring the feel of Illumi’s body shifting around him before he presses back in with the same deliberate pace, slow and fixed enough that Illumi can measure each inch the other gains by the pull and press within him. “Do you want to kill me?”

“Yes,” Illumi says, and hooks his knee up over Hisoka’s shoulder, pressing his leg in close against the shudder of his arm where he’s holding the other against him. Hisoka makes a strangled sound in his throat, as if he’s drowning in the mist of the water splashing around them, and when his hand slides it’s to clutch at the back of Illumi’s neck with force enough to arch the other’s head back. “Both.”

Hisoka’s head comes forward, his forehead landing hard at Illumi’s collarbone as he strives for air against the other’s skin. “Illumi,” he moans. “Marry me, my love.”

Illumi lifts his hand from Hisoka’s shoulder to bring his scarlet-stained fingers to the other’s hair, to press against the blood-red of the wet locks. “Yes.”

“I’ll take out an assassination contract on myself with you,” Hisoka gasps. “As proof of our engagement.” His hips come forward, his cock urges Illumi open; Illumi’s vision hazes, his shoulders flex with the force of the strain working into him. “You’ll be the one to kill me, won’t you, love?”

“Yes,” Illumi says. “I will.”

Hisoka groans so deep in his chest Illumi can feel it humming an echo in his own. “ _God_ ,” he says, and thrusts forward hard. “That turns me _on_.” He pulls back and comes in again, falling into a pattern formed of haste for his movements. “Tell me again, Illumi.”

“I love you,” Illumi says. His hand is in Hisoka’s hair, his fingers are still at the other’s neck; there’s blood sliding away from his touch and melting under the spray of the shower, but Hisoka doesn’t flinch any more than Illumi does with each of the other’s thrusts rocking him back against the shower wall and pressing his legs up flush against his chest. “I’ll marry you. I’ll kill you.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Hisoka says, his voice sweeping down and up to make a plea of his pleasure. “Illumi, _yes_ , yes, tell me ‘I do.’”

“I do,” Illumi says.

“ _Ah_ ,” Hisoka wails. “Yes, _Illumi_ ” as his voice makes a song of the other’s name, as his hips speed to desperate haste. “Come for me, my beauty, my love.” His hand fixes on Illumi’s hair and drags against the weight of it to wrench at the strength of the other’s neck, to urge his chin up and back as if baring his throat for the edge of that blade of Hisoka’s smile. “I want to feel it, I want to _feel_ you, come for me, _come_ for me.”

“Hisoka,” Illumi says; but Hisoka is moving faster, working frantic speed into Illumi’s body, and there’s a pressure in Illumi’s throat, a strain all across his chest more than enough to overcome the tension in his upraised thighs. The air is hot, thick with damp and hazy with steam, Illumi can feel the struggle in his lungs when he draws in an inhale; but more than that is the ache in his belly, rising up from his hips to sweep through his abdomen and up like the same steam that is filling his lungs is rising to expand through the whole of his body as well. Illumi tightens his grip on Hisoka’s shoulder, feels the other’s skin tearing to his fingernails and the spill of blood running thick across his body before washing clean, and inside him Hisoka’s cock drives deep as Illumi’s head tips back, his eyes opening wide as his mouth falls open, his whole existence transfixed by the sensation that runs him through. His thighs flex, his arms shudder, his feet arch and his chest strains, and between his body and Hisoka’s his cock spurts heat with strength enough to lace Hisoka’s chest with white and ache a pressure near to pain in Illumi’s balls. Illumi quakes against the wall, overcome by pleasure so keen it’s more transcendence than satisfaction; and against his shoulder Hisoka moans all the way from the depths of his throat and shoves in closer.

“ _God_ ,” he groans, and he’s moving, harder than before, faster than before, his rhythm collapsing to jerky desperation that sends aftershocks of heat flexing through Illumi’s back and curling at his toes. Illumi gasps, eyes still wide and distracted out of sight by sensation, and against his shoulder Hisoka rattles over a breath and seizes his fingers tight into the muscle of Illumi’s braced-up leg.

“Illumi,” Hisoka says, his voice spilling from the deepest point of his chest, down from the further strain of his working lungs. “I _do_ ” and his hips snap up, his cock penetrating deep before pulsing long surges of pleasure within Illumi. Hisoka groans into Illumi’s shoulder, giving voice to each convulsion of release that Illumi can feel rippling through the other’s body, until finally he whimpers himself into silence and there’s just the sound of the shower spilling over them to cover the rasp of their breathing. They stay there for a moment, Hisoka’s hold bracing Illumi up and the flex of his legs keeping them both upright; then Hisoka folds all at once, his knees crumpling to drop him to the tile of the shower without any effort at all to save them from the fall. They land hard, Hisoka at his knees and Illumi only saving himself from a bruised hip by throwing out a hand to take some of the impact, but even then Hisoka doesn’t pull away, just slides his hands loose from under Illumi’s knees so he can wind them both around the other’s neck and up into his hair instead.

“Illumi,” Hisoka purrs, with none of the pain of their landing audible in his tone, and Illumi lifts his head and lets Hisoka’s mouth press wet and warm against his own. Hisoka’s hands fist into Illumi’s hair, squeezing as if to urge the weight of water free of the locks, and after a moment Illumi frees his own grip from Hisoka’s shoulder to draw up and press his palms flush to the back of the other’s head too. He braces them together as Hisoka opens his mouth and Illumi licks past his lips to sample the heat of his mouth, to draw some of the other’s heat in over the drag of his own tongue. Hisoka groans in the back of his throat, as hot as if he’s stirring himself towards arousal again, but when his hips buck forward against Illumi’s thigh it’s only the slow-fading heat of his spent length that drags against the other before Hisoka draws back to sigh gustily over Illumi’s lips.

“You’ve drained me,” he says, sounding as truly disappointed as if Illumi’s thighs aren’t still slick with his last release. “I’m going to need to rest before I can claim you again.”

Illumi blinks. “Will you again tonight?”

Hisoka’s smile is as good as a purr. “Of course,” he says, and lets one hand slide down Illumi’s hair to catch the other in the span of his arm as he offers the contact. “It’s our honeymoon, we must make the most of it.” His weight slides sideways over the tile of the shower floor, his hold at Illumi’s hair bracing his weight as he tips down to sprawl languid across the other’s lap to rest his face against Illumi’s thigh and smile sultry heat up from the pillow of the other’s body. “You’ve had your confession, isn’t it my turn to get on my knees?”

“Later,” Illumi says, tightening his hold on Hisoka’s hair to keep him where he is instead of leaning forward to offer his mouth for the spent soft of Illumi’s cock. “We’ll clean up first.”

“Mm,” Hisoka says. “Purifying ourselves before the next indulgence? I like the way you think.” He shifts on Illumi’s lap, turning to rest his head against the other so he can turn his face up to the splash of the shower and shut his eyes for the play of the water over his skin. There’s a smile on his lips, a curve holding to the stained red of his mouth; Illumi gazes at it for a long while while the water splashes over them to drench Illumi’s hair to a flat weight and to spill Hisoka’s to waves over Illumi’s thighs. Then he sits up from his lean against the wall, and curves in and over Hisoka beneath him, and presses his mouth carefully to the shape of the other’s lips.

The water runs over them like rain, rinsing the blood from Hisoka’s shoulder and free of Illumi’s hair to leave them both new-baptized, and Illumi fits his breath against Hisoka’s and tastes the strange sweet of _love_ on his tongue like a prayer to a new-made god.


End file.
